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Submitted by jbudziszewski on Mon, 05/22/2017 - 00:00

True story: At a private liberal arts college, four out of 16 students are failing the freshman writing course. The reasons: Failure to turn in the assignments on time (sometimes not at all); failure to address instructor’s comments on essay drafts; failure to use a sufficient number of sources in the research papers (sometimes not using any sources at all); inability or unwillingness to correct grammatical errors pointed out by the instructor.

The instructor meets with director of writing program to discuss plans for upcoming year. The same director had revealed, at a faculty meeting, that in her own writing classes she had given an A to every student.

Instructor asks whether it is likely that there will be courses for him to teach next year.

Director (sighs): "What do you think?"

Instructor: "I don't know, what do you think?"

Director: "Students pay a lot of money to come here, and they expect certain things."